Dealing With Faraway SMEs

Subject matter experts (SMEs) are the people who have loads of knowledge about a particular application, domain, subject, etc. In an organization, the person designated as Subject matter expert (SME) will be a person who knows each process to be followed for a certain task and at the correct time, relevant to the context. Depending upon the nature of the subject and the vastness of the topic-at-hand, the number of experts whom you need to contact in the process of your data gathering may vary. Whatever may be the subject, SMEs guide Technical Writers (TWs) on the specified topic, help them in understanding the subject, make them write about the topic-in-hand clearly and precisely, and finally review the writer’s work in detail. After the review, the Technical Writer (TW) incorporates all the corrections pointed out by the SME and releases the final version of the subject document.

Overall, during the writing process, there will be a lot of interaction between the writer and the SME. Since all doubts of the writer are to be cleared by the expert while making him/her understand the topic-at-hand, the role played by the SME is so crucial to complete the documentation task. Normally, for the facility of interaction, both the TW and the SME sit at the same place. But, there will be a situation where the TW and the SME do not sit at the same place, but at distant places (sometimes, perhaps countries apart) depending up on the project they both are dealing with. The expert may sit some thousands of miles away from the writer and from there he/she tries to start transferring knowledge to the writer. Even the writer’s doubts and the document reviews are also cleared and done by the expert through phone and mails. This article talks about the problems faced by those TWs who sit faraway from their SMEs.

There is a big question in the Technical Writing world that whether it is necessary that the TW has to understand the personal nature of the SME to get his/her work done successfully. The answer is Yes. Actually, that increases the understanding level between the writer and the expert. Since the expert has loads of knowledge regarding the topic-in-hand, he/she expresses it at a professional level, whereas the writer has to present the same stuff for a nonprofessional most of the times.

The onus of responsibility lies with the Technical Writer to understand the topic-in-hand and the Subject Matter Expert’s personal nature also. For example, while reviewing the subject matter, the SME may pass comment suggesting a particular point. Sometimes, the comment itself is written in such a way that it is impossible to understand it. The comment is so abstract in nature that to understand it, there is no way but the writer has to become a Sherlock Holmes (the great detective in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stories!!!) to decipher the underlying meaning of the comment. At this point of time, if the writer has some background knowledge of the personal nature of the SME and the way he/she works, then there is a chance that the TW can decipher the stuff and continue the work. If the writer does not know about the personal nature of the SME, then there will be a lot of correspondence on that particular comment, which may not only justify the resources used to understand it but also that will be a drain on the company’s resources also.

The problem of understanding the personal nature of SME arises because most of the SMEs, though they are well-versed in their respective subject knowledge, are not good at teaching the same. In another way, they are not trained teachers. Teaching again is a different talent altogether. In this case, if the SME who sits faraway from the writer does also have a good talent in teaching, then most of the writer’s problems will vanish.

The only antidote for a talented subject expert but with no teaching talent is an intelligent writer, who can understand both the subject-in-hand and the personal nature of the expert also, no matter where he/she sits.